Fully or highly automated driving systems are designed to operate a vehicle on the road without driver interaction or other external control, for example, self-driving vehicles or autonomous vehicles. Operating autonomously requires certainty in both the location of stationary objects, such as road signs and natural features of the environment, and detection and tracking of moving objects proximate to these stationary objects, such as other vehicles and pedestrians proximate to the autonomous vehicle. In order to improve reaction time of the autonomous vehicle, both stationary and moving objects should be recognized as accurately and as quickly as possible. Once recognized, location information associated with some stationary objects can be added to a background map format designed to be ignored during object tracking to allow the autonomous vehicle to reduce processing time.
One prior art automated driving system includes a background map format that automatically adds new background objects to the background map format once the objects are recognized as motionless by the autonomous vehicle while the autonomous vehicle traverses a route. Another prior art automated driving system includes means for transforming three-dimensional data captured for background objects into two-dimensional data in order to use less storage space in a background map format. However, there is a need for a background map format configured to include a minimum amount of location information for background objects in order improve the accuracy of moving object tracking and significantly reduce computing time for the autonomous vehicle to more rapidly make driving decisions.